Future Grim For Green Peter Kokanee Fishery

The large fishkill seen last fall below Green Peter Reservoir was the likely death knell for the Willamette Valley impoundment’s popular kokanee fishery as court-ordered drawdowns for ESA-listed native stocks continue this year.

A local newspaper is reporting today that federal and state officials indicate the opportunity to catch the landlocked sockeye salmon will be poor to nonexistent there “for the foreseeable future” after more than 1 million of the fish were sucked out of the reservoir last fall and thousands died from barotrauma, and none have been stocked since the mid-2010s.

It’s a “huge blow to anglers and the economy of Sweet Home,” the nearest town to Green Peter, writes Zach Urness, the outdoor columnist at the Salem Statesman Journal who has been closely following the situation.

The Army Corps of Engineers’ drawdown is meant to help young wild spring Chinook and winter steelhead migrate downstream through a naturally flowing river environment than the more stagnant reservoir. After a Native Fish Society lawsuit, a U.S. District Court judge in Portland ordered the annual fall and winter reservoir lowerings.

Green Peter’s first drawdown last year left the South Santiam River a muddy mess, municipal water purification facilities struggling to cope and locals’ wells dried up, leaving “mud in the eye of restoring” the Willamette River springer and winter-run runs, as I headlined a blog last November.

A federal biologist admitted to Urness that the number of wild spring Chinook smolts that passed downstream was “a lot smaller than we were hoping for,” in the range of several thousand instead of the five-digit figures officials had wanted to see, but also said it was too early to draw conclusions.

Hopefully, it works better this year and in following ones and this helps the kings and steelies thrive like how natural-origin coho suddenly are in the Willamette, but the cost to the kokanee fishery and community are dear.

As it stands, ODFW is forecasting this fall’s Green Peter drawdown will “create another sediment problem as it did last year” and fishing is essentially off till next spring when trout are stocked and the lake rises again as rains and snowpack runoff refill it.